Paul Rosenberg knows a lot about a lot of things. A lifestyle capitalist with a broad range of interests and experiences under his belt, current passions include philosophy, theology, history, psychology, and physics. This diverse interest base is reflected in his extensive repertoire of published titles, including A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, The Words of the Founders, and Production Versus Plunder, not to mention 55 engineering and construction books.

Prior to this, his highly successful engineering career saw him called as an expert witness in numerous legal cases and recruited as a consultant to a number of high profile organizations, such as NASA and the US military. He developed and taught 19 continuing education courses for Iowa State University's College of Engineering. He also co-founded the Fiber Optic Association and wrote the first ever standard for the installation of fiber optic cables.

I couldn't tell you how many times I've heard Western civilization disparaged, in everything from street talk to written screeds to intellectual circles. It would have to be thousands of times at least. In fact, it's something that people (including people who should know better) repeat endlessly, always confident that they'll receive a pat on the back for it.

Criticizing the West passes for enlightenment these days.

Except that it's false. Western civilization (and by that I mean European civilization and its offshoots, from the breakup of the Western Roman Empire to today… the civilization based upon Judeo-Christian ethics and scientific progress) is, by far, the most productive in human history. To criticize it in broad terms is not a sign of enlightenment, but of delusion.

Let Us Begin

Have you ever seen the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice? The scuole (and there were several in Venice) were what we call "confraternities": voluntary associations of Christian lay people, most commonly merchants, who promoted charitable works.

This room (and there's more in this scuola) wasn't built by rulers celebrating their own magnificence or even a religion celebrating its magnificence[1]. It came from individuals in a charity league.

What you're seeing are the fruits of commerce, Christian ethics, and civilizational self-confidence. The art in this building is stunning. So much so that you need a mirror to carry around for viewing the ceiling: Your neck couldn't take all the craning it would have to do to see even a fraction of it.

Here's the interior of a church in Rome called San Giovanni in Laterno:

And please trust me; you need to see these things in person to really appreciate them.

The Point Here

I could go on, and I will in future columns (though spread out over time). The real point here is not that the people of the West are inherently superior. It's that they had a civilization that permitted their talents to function. Often, the critical moments came when the talented people were young, and developing their talents required the society to keep doors open to them long before they reached anything resembling full growth.

Western civilization, as Aristotle might have put it, provided a set of ideas, and a people molded by them, in which talented lives found sufficient scope to produce wonders.

Western civilization never had a monopoly on human greatness – all humans are potentially great – but this culture, this shared set of ideas, was an environment especially suited to the thriving of talent… a nurturing condition in which great talents and works could thrive and did thrive.

* * * * *

As it turns out, history was never too hard to understand; they just told you the wrong story.

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"The mark of an educated mind," taught Aristotle, is "to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." And that's what I'll be asking of you today. Because as certain as I am that I'm substantially right on this, I'm also sure that its acceptance will take quite some time. But I do want to plant its seeds as best I can.

The Cult… Is Us

Doubtless you've seen or heard stories about religious cults and the people born into them. They all focus upon the same set of writings and explanations, all repeat the same phrases, and all approve or disapprove of the same things.

If you're inside such a structure, it makes sense and holds together. Stepping outside the structure, however… that becomes terrifying.

And so I'll ask you to think, please, of the place rules hold in our world. They are everywhere. They are everything. No one would try to imagine anything else. Rules are, were, and ever shall be. Only a crazy person would think otherwise.

And so the walls of our cult stand, and it is we who maintain them.

What Rules Are

Rules are edicts, not processes. They're mechanical, not organic. They are binary, not broad or rich.

Rules do not envision thought; they envision only the polarized termini of obedience and disobedience. Rules do not open space for the consideration of principles and possibilities; they open only enough space for orthodoxy or heresy.

Limits can be enforced perfectly well without rules. The impetus behind this type of enforcement, however, must be willful and personal. That is, we each choose to enforce limits based upon our own determinations. For example:

Informing your neighbors that Bob has stolen from you and warning them to be careful.

Refusing to do business with someone who behaves especially badly.

Putting a note on the car of someone who endangers others by driving recklessly. Then putting a "boot" on the car if the endangerment continues.

Shooting a killer or rapist in the act.

We're all afraid of these things, because acting on our own leaves us unprotected from responsibility and shame. Inside the cult, accepting responsibility is worse than abdicating our minds and wills. We instantly imagine all the ways it could go wrong: The bad guy will shoot me, people will ridicule me, I'll be embarrassed forever, my spouse will dump me, and so on. We imagine all of the worst and none of the positive. The cult is fighting to keep us within. Balance and proportion are non-players.

And yet, all the examples above show limits being enforced without resorting to rules… by using our wills rather than abdicating major functions of them.

All Be Monsters?

What is excluded from consideration is that most people are basically decent. Sure, they're also somewhat variable, having better and worse moments, but generally, they're pretty decent. What percentage of drivers, for example, deviate from the "basically okay" model?

I strongly suggest that the next time you're a passenger in a car, you start counting basically okay drivers and dangerous drivers.

On a real-world, average basis, I'll bet that 95% of people (on the street, in offices, etc.) are basically decent.

So, are we really afraid of situations where 19 of 20 people are exercising their will toward the good? Is that automatically more frightening than rules that are written by the corrupt and enforced by only one in several hundred who may be equally corrupt?

And how much better might the world be if people habitually used their minds and wills, rather than instinctively turned them off? This is a question you may want to hold in the back of your mind. I don't have a statistical answer for you, but I'll bet the difference would be massive.

A sea of active minds… a web of active will toward the good… these are beneficial things and things that rules forbid.

Last Words

I think I've made my point fairly well, but since the cult of rules is so very pervasive, I'll restate the core of this once more, again asking you to allow it to remain in your mind as a possibility, however unlikely:

Enthroning rules as unquestionable, and life without them unimaginable, we have turned off important functions of our minds; we have deactivated important functions of our wills… functions that are essential for birthing life and goodness into the world.

* * * * *

The 20th century, for better or worse, is over. This book was written from the trenches of the new data wars. It offers a raw, apolitical view of what is happening and where the practice of intelligence is headed.

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If you have a glimpse of the whole picture of history and where we can head (or are heading) as a civilization, you should come away from this read with new insights."

Karen Kwiatkowski (ka-tao-skee) was commissioned in 1982 as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. After tours in Massachusetts, Spain and Italy, Kwiatkowski was assigned to the National Security Agency, eventually becoming a speech writer for the agency's director.

Col. Kwiatkowski transferred to the Pentagon, first working on the Air Staff as a political military affairs officer, then moving over to the Italy Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy, in the Sub-Saharan Africa Directorate. From May 2002 to February 2003, she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA). While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, "Insider Notes from the Pentagon" that appeared on the website of David Hackworth, protesting neoconservatism inside the Pentagon and the pro-war propaganda being put forth by Pentagon appointees. Kwiatkowski was in her office inside the Pentagon when it was tragically attacked on September 11, 2001. She left NESA in February 2003 and after 20 years of service, retired from the Air Force.

In April 2003, she began writing articles for the libertarian website in Italy LewRockwell.com. In June 2003, the Ohio Beacon Journal, published her op-ed "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon" which attracted international notice. Kwiatkowski became publicly known for criticizing a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her most comprehensive writings on this subject appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com.

Kwiatkowski has become a respected columnist for various international media outlets. She is a regular contributor to Lewrockwell.com and has had articles about her work with the Department of Defense published in the American Conservative. She has hosted the popular call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally on Liberty and Power. Since her retirement, she has taught American government related classes at Lord Fairfax Community College and James Madison University, and teaches information systems related classes for the University of Maryland. She and her husband raise beef cattle in Shenandoah County, Virginia. They have been married

And now, John Sidney McCain, III is a corpse in a morgue awaiting his state burial. It is as it should be, perhaps for the first time in his entire life.

McCain – the holy terror of teenager and Naval Academy cadet, mad pilot and poster child for the horrors of the towering enemy we faced for our very survival as a Republic in Vietnam, and political animal for much of his life – clearly was not at home in this world.

In a world filled with people who are all pretty much accountable on a daily basis for their decisions, choices, actions, and for the pain they have and are causing, John McCain was missing from his post.

Instead, as a son of a successful Naval commander, he path was not entirely his own, and yet he did, repeatedly, choose that path. His biggest tragedy may have been that he was the namesake of a distinguished military family. Certainly the life of his younger brother Joe Pinckney McCain is a testament to how being born into service of the state doesn't have to result in the deaths of so many for so long.

Where failures and character flaws occur in all families, when they occur in the important chapter of the national narrative called "Military Heroism And Sacrifice In The Name Of National Greatness And Security," something must be done.

And what was done? Props, propaganda and prose all came forth, and we aren't done being propagandized and prosed to death just yet. The funeral is coming.

The story of being shot down, likely by friendly fire, and his subsequent capture and torture by the "North" Vietnamese (a state construct in its own right) is rarely told in detail, but rather bundled in the official narrative under "courage." His divorce of his first wife and disconnect from his first family – understandable because of what war, separation and the stress of a military society do to human beings – is not discussed. Nor are the personal, political and financial machinations that led to his first Congressional seat, and shortly thereafter, a secure Senate seat for Arizona, a seat he has held since this weekend.

From being a savior of the A-10 Warthog program, refusing to allow it a natural death — ironically the aircraft known for causing the most friendly fire and civilian deaths — to saving Obamacare from the breach, to reliably supporting projects to change governments overseas, all while waging low-level but steady combat against liberty and the Constitution at home, McCain was a busy man, and a well-connected, well-funded politician.

The actions of McCain as Senator are legion, and while no doubt people of various political stripes may find at least one or two things to laud in his progressive neoconservative warmongering and state-strengthening agenda in over three decades, in reality he earned no loyalty. This glowing yet strangely surreal obit by Jeff Goldberg of the leftward progressive and warmongering Atlantic says it all – and has it all wrong.

Goldberg links John McCain to Anne Frank – someone who cares about the underdog and has a deep moral compass. To study John McCain's life and times would lead one to conclude many things, but that he cares about the underdog and was guided by a deep sustaining morality would not be among them.

A better way to understand John McCain is to see him for what he really was and what he never escaped, although in his wistful moments one wonders if he dreamed of it. He was a child of the state, the military state specifically. He was the namesake of men who fought for the state, sacrificed their principles and families for the state, he was schooled by the state, both in the many military base schools he attended as a child, then the Naval Academy, later the US Navy, even later a prison camp – and in all of these places John McCain was treated and handled just a little bit different than the average Joe. In every way, he owed his very life and his very liberty to the fact that he was deeply connected to the elites who are the shining beneficiaries of the American empire.

Later, as long-serving Senator and presidential candidate he became one of those elites in his own right, and earned every drip of contempt by the thinking people — and every plaudit by state mouthpieces — on his own merit.

I'll never forget a story I heard, where, in the privacy of an elevator (with some people who didn't count as witnesses) McCain repeatedly jabbed a fellow Senator in the chest while making his point and/or intimidating his inferior. Even after he learned to box at the Academy, as Robert Timburg writes, he "would charge into the center of the ring and throw punches until someone went down." For a national narrative that likes physical courage and loves the quick fighter, McCain was tailor-made.

Timburg, in writing about McCain's Naval Academy days, was extraordinarily prescient. McCain was "…an unofficial trail boss for a lusty band of carousers and partygoers known as the Bad Bunch." That lusty band of carousers and partygoers we have seen before in our lives. When that group persists for decades and rules an empire, it is because they are consistently protected from the consequences of their own decisions and actions.

Joe McCain, John's younger brother, took a different path, where he would not become rich or powerful, where he would be accountable for his decisions and actions. He is not lauded in the media, and in fact was ridiculed when brother John was running for President in 2008 for calling 911 to find out what was happening in a traffic jam on the Wilson Bridge.

Both were children of the state. Joe called 911 innocently, because why not, it's there to serve me! John rained hell on governments and populations around the planet, including his own, for similar reasons. It's a kind of entitlement mentality, and it is as understandable as it is deeply immoral.

In John McCain's lifetime, the US Government has nearly quadrupled in size and scope, while popular trust in government has collapsed. Solutions to local and global problems today however are far more accessible to far more people. Today, no one would call 911 for a traffic report when they have real time traffic mapping in their cars, and a full range of productive things to do while waiting. Technology and human nature both favor decentralization and individualism whenever they can get it, preferring liberty over lockstep marching in spitshined boots and buckles that young John resented so much at the USNA.